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thousands of years. I have lived here for five hundred years.
Lettie has lived here with me for a hundred and fifty
years.”
    “Vampires aren’t real,” I said in a
hushed voice.
    “To humans, we are merely fairy tales
and folklore. But we do exist. We have lived in secret among human
beings for eons.”
    “The two of you think you are
vampires.”
    Lettie rolled her eyes. She twirled
her finger. “We are vampires. The three of us.”
    She’s delusional. The room suddenly tilted. My eyes became
unfocused and I fought a wave of nausea. I felt Lettie at my side,
but I lacked the energy to fight her. She hooked her willowy arms
into mine and pulled me to my feet.
    “New vampires are weak and vulnerable.
You need to feed to grow strong,” Uther said.
    “Stop. I’m not a vampire,” I said.
“I’m just a girl.”
    “If you were just a girl, how could
you have had the strength to crawl out of that well?” Lettie asked.
She led me back to the bed and we passed the wardrobe, where a
mirror hung on the inside of the open door.
    In the reflection, I could see Lettie
carrying a young woman. A young woman that I recognized. I gasped.
Startled, Lettie halted. She saw the mirror and brought me over to
it.
    The woman in the reflection looked
like me but didn’t look like me.
    “Oh my God,” I whispered.
    It was as if I was looking at an
artist’s rendering of myself. A portrait with exaggerated colors
and soft lines. My hair was so dark. The black reflected the light,
creating the impression of a shining tiara across my bangs. I
parted my lips, which had turned crimson, and my teeth were so
white they were almost fluorescent. The scariest part was my eyes.
They weren’t chocolate brown anymore. They were amber. And bright
like fire.
    “What the hell…”
    “What do you see?” asked
Uther.
    I see and do not
see. Lettie released me so that I could
move closer to the mirror. I reached for my face. My glowing,
golden skin was smooth like glass under my trembling finger tips.
The scar under my mouth—the one I had gotten when I was seven and
hit a chain-link fence, impaling my chin on on a rusty gate
hinge—had disappeared. I could not find a blemish, a freckle, a
pore.
    “I look…” I couldn’t find words. I
smoothed my thick curls against my head.
    “I think you look good,” Lettie
said.
    “You’re a vampire now,” Uther said.
“You have been reborn. You’re beautiful and you’re powerful. You
will never know illness. You will never age or die. You will exist
now, as perfect as you are, for all eternity.”
    In the mirror, I watched as his words
washed over me. They penetrated my silent heart and left me cold. I
stared at this face, into wide glittering eyes, and realized that I
was not breathing. More importantly, that I felt no need to draw a
breath.
    “Who are you?” I whispered to
myself.
    “You are a miracle,” Uther said. “To
be blessed as a vampire is a rare gift, only bestowed upon a select
few each century, and they must be deemed worthy by our elders.
Your arrival is extraordinary. Such a phenomenon has never occurred
in our history. Never has a vampire been born without having fed
from another.”
    “How did this happen?”
    “The well is filled with blood, my
child,” Uther said. “Vampire blood.”
     
     

Chapter
7
     
    Soon, it would be morning. Sofia would
come to our bedroom door, knock twice, and then poke her head
inside. She’d see my empty, made bed and demand to know where I
was. Miyuki would tell her that I had escaped out the window to see
a boy and had not returned. A panicked Sofia would send Giuseppe
out to look for me while she called the authorities. Then she would
call my parents. My father’s booming, angry voice would force
Sofia’s ear from the receiver. My mother would stand by, wringing
her hands and asking for answers—“What’s going on? What’s happened
to Zee?”—while my father interrogated Sofia. They would call my
cell phone, text me, and e-mail